BOC maintains UKAS accreditation18 December 2012

Press Releases

Following the annual management systems and technical assessments at our Speciality Gases production sites at Immingham and Morden, BOC is delighted to announce that we have retained our United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025, 'General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories' and ISO Guide 34 'General requirements for the competence of reference material producers' as a Calibration Laboratory and Reference Material Producer.

Furthermore, our accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 as a Testing Laboratory in our central analytical services laboratory in Sheffield has also been maintained.

ISO/IEC 17025: 'General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories'

BOC has a longstanding accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 for a wide range of gas calibration mixtures and has progressively extended the scope of accreditation to cover a range of gaseous hydrocarbon mixtures to enable the production and certification of synthetic natural gas and petrochemicals mixtures.

BOC has also recently gained ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation as a Testing Laboratory demonstrating our focus on quality and development and ‘continuous improvement’.

ISO Guide 34 includes explicit requirements for Request, Tender and Contract reviews, Production Planning and Control, Material handling and storage, Material processing, Metrological traceability and the assessment of homogeneity and stability. ISO Guide 34 enables BOC to specify and include a shelf life period on the accredited Certificates of Analysis for all of our ISO/IEC 17025 gas calibration mixtures.

The audit process involves an extensive assessment by UKAS technical specialists who conduct a detailed examination our management system, technical capability and competence to produce accredited calibration mixtures throughout our production processes. This includes cylinder preparation and passivation, raw materials analysis, a detailed evaluation of production instructions’ for the preparation of the calibration mixture – including issues of materials compatibility, stability, Joule-Thomson cooling etc. and the review of stability data – certification analyses and issues of metrological traceability.